


Some Nights

by themoistplinth



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: Angst, Dark Percy, F/M, Just a short drabble, but it works as a fic, but not really, headcanon really
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-19
Updated: 2017-09-19
Packaged: 2018-12-31 17:01:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12137034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themoistplinth/pseuds/themoistplinth
Summary: After the last few years of his life, what does Percy dream about?





	Some Nights

Some nights Percy dreams about Blackjack and Jason and Piper and blue cake and watching the fireworks on the beach with Annabeth. Other nights he dreams about his father’s undersea palace and rescuing trapped marine life and the look on Zeus’ dumb face when he turned down immortality. So much good had happened to him since he’d slain that Minotaur up on half-blood hill, he’d found a new family and a new purpose and even had a brother and a sister.

But that was only some nights he was granted the pleasure of those memories; the price of his incredible, wonderful life was a great one. His nights were wracked with other, worse memories, memories like watching Annabeth’s face strain under the weight of the sky or feeling the fear Grover felt in Polyphemus’ cave or the doom that Piper and Jason had to face in Rome with him, the one time water betrayed him and he was absolutely powerless.

  
None of those memories came close to the worst-nothing could ever compare to Tartarus. The entire place smelt like Smelly Gabe and his cronies and the entire place just felt unsafe, like when bullies used to pick on him. The worst part was that it felt like he was marching through a giant monster’s body to its stomach, like the only way he could escape was to lay down in the acid and dissolve into nothing. In a way he was-Tartarus was alive and they passed many signs of it being his body. Maybe he was still in there.

  
The worst of it wasn’t what he felt though, that would be easy to deal with. It was how Annabeth had felt.

  
The nights he stayed with her she sometimes woke up panicked and sweaty, her eyes wide and frantic. For a while she kept a dagger under her pillow because she kept thinking something was coming for her from under her bed-the tortures of Tartarus regressing her back into a child. If only she’d seek comfort in him.

  
But Percy knew why Annabeth would never be able to seek him out again for comfort, that there’d always be some hesitation. He’d ruined them in a major way down that pit, scared her more than giants and spiders and titans and flesh eating sheep ever could.  The absolute terror that Annabeth experienced watching him torture Akhlys on the very edge of creation itself would haunt Percy for a thousand more life times. He wielded power beyond what any mortal, what any god or goddess or monster from the pits of hell, should get to wield.

  
Percy could possibly live with the fact that Annabeth had been so afraid of the power that poison-who wouldn’t be? But it had kept them alive, that was what mattered, and if Annabeth was afraid but alive he could live with it.

  
The real thing that harmed Percy was that he didn’t just not regret controlling that poison, no, it was that he missed it. He missed the raw power it’d granted him. With that power Percy could do anything he wanted-he could make sure no demigod ever got hurt again, that the gods would claim their kids, he could make sure Annabeth was safe forever.

  
More than that he could end wars and topple empires-Percy could protect the world in a way that the gods, his own father, never had.

  
Some nights Percy dreams about the world he could’ve created and mourns the evil that he became.

**Author's Note:**

> Yo Helle happy birthday, enjoy your angst


End file.
